COURSE of the MONTH

Problems seeing embedded pictures in Outlook 2003

A user in my organization is having a problem with his Outlook 2003. When someone sends him an embedded picture, like a JPG it will not show in the body of the message. Instead he sees the red X. If he forwards/replies, the picture shows properly in the body of the reply. This is his work-around to see the picture...he clicks Forward and boom! There's the picture.

A few things I've noticed:

- This doesn't appear to be an Automatic Picture Downloads problem. I've set his settings to the same as mine by unchecking the box "Don't download pictures or other content automatically in HTML e-mail"
- His Outlook security Zones are defaulted to Restricted Zones but I tried changing to Internet Zone as well.
- I’ve defaulted his Security TAB and Advanced TAB in IE6.
- I sent him a couple different picture types and a GIF I sent worked, but a JPG and BMP did not. I also tried different JPG files and one worked while another did not.

You stated you changed the Outlook security settings to Internet Zone. What are the security settings in the Internet Zone? If they're set to High, they may be interferring with the picture downloads.

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mfishcoAuthor Commented: 2007-03-28

Yeah I thought about that but the settings for the Internet Zone (as well as all the other zones) were set back to its default state during my troubleshooting. The Internet Zone is set to Medium and the Restricted Zone to high.

During my troubleshooting I tried swapping to the Internet Zone to see if that would solve the issue, but it did not (I've since reverted back to the Restricted Zone).

Remember, some JPG's will show up and others will not. 95% of the time, Outlook blocks the pictures but in some rare cases, they will show up. It's quite aggravating!

What antivirus? Try disabling your AV (Temporarily) and see if it makes a difference.

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mfishcoAuthor Commented: 2007-04-06

Sorry it took so long to get back to you, but this end-user is a bit hard to get a hold of.

I verified it's not an anti-virus issue.

My next steps are to try logging in as a different user, creating an outlook account and seeing if this problem is based on his user vs. the laptop. I'm also getting a chance to go through that machine with a fine tooth comb to see if any external programs are causing this.

After that, I guess I'll need to uninstall/reinstall Outlook. Though that's not my ideal solution, his OST 5 GB in size. Ugh!

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mfishcoAuthor Commented: 2007-04-09

Thanks michko, I'll take a look through your links and let you know what happens.